


The Truth in My Mouth

by lazarov



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Angst and Romance, Bucky Barnes Has a Future, Bucky the Earth Witch, F/M, Hurt Bucky Barnes, M/M, Marvel Universe, Protective Steve Rogers, Puritanism, Slow Burn, Steve Rogers Has a Past, no betas we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:20:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27130349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazarov/pseuds/lazarov
Summary: In 1722, Steve flees New York and finds himself in Acomb, Massachusetts. Bucky is the resident witch.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 11
Kudos: 21





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Sex. Magic. Death. Puritanism. 
> 
> It's going to be all the good things. 
> 
> And an [opening credits song](https://youtu.be/QtvqLDYSlQI), of sorts, just for you.

✢ ✢ ✢

By 1722, Acomb had been settled long enough to be more than a mile-and-a-half-wide glade surrounded by a dense wood of white pine and oak. It had a road, now, and a schoolhouse. Surrounding those, twenty-seven saltbox homes uniformly wrapped in weather-beaten clapboard. Smoke poured from their chimneys in a never-ending stream, rising from the hearth fires dutifully tended to by the village’s wives and daughters. 

On the north side of the clearing, there were common fields of corn and wheat. To the west, the stables and the cow pasture. In the south, the Church loomed tall, its long shadow dragging across every inch of the village before the day was through.

Finally, to the east was the river and the grist mill — and the wagon-worn road leading out to Massachusetts Bay, and to the infinite stretch of the dark Great Western Ocean, and to whatever mysteries lay beyond that.

✢ ✢ ✢

  
  



	2. One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your soundtrack for this chapter: [1](https://youtu.be/02hHRnfh6SY), [2](https://youtu.be/t89NKH45dz), [3](https://youtu.be/kdiusXx9nmY).
> 
> Currently brute force, "no betas, we die like men"-ing this but... if anyone has any interest in beta-ing this slow burn beast, I would owe you my firstborn (for whatever witchcraft purposes you may desire).

✢ ✢ ✢

The nearest village of any notable size is miles away, and except for the occasional visitors offering trades of domestic goods and tobacco, hardly any strangers ever stumble into Acomb. 

Steve found it by accident after days on foot. He followed the wagon road, where it split off from the main cobbled path out from the coast, keeping his footsteps confined to the leftmost of the two long, muddy divots in the grass.

Villages around these parts aren’t friendly. Mostly, they're weary after years of local skirmishes and in a constant state of standoffishness at best or on the edge of sudden, impulsive violence at worst. As Steve drew nearer, he stepped off the path and into the woods so that he could assess his chances from a safer vantage point. He picked his way between the trees, his trousers catching slightly on the rough line of thicket at the wood’s edge. 

Now he stands, camouflaged by the shade of the oaks, to take in the respectable cluster of homes and the wide, blowing fields, which stretched like a lake across the clearing. The plot of corn was nothing out of the ordinary, although from what Steve can tell from this distance the stalks seemed particularly tall and robust, the cobs thicker and heavier than most. What surprises him, rather, is the sea of golden wheat. The soil in these parts did not take well to grain crops. 

Steve takes a while to watch the wheat wave and dance in the wind — it reminds him of the ocean, and it makes him briefly long for home in a way that makes his chest ache, like someone is sitting on it with iron chains in their hands and a boulder in their lap. He closes his eyes: the wind feels good on his skin, now that he’s out of the sun. 

He’s been walking for a long, long time, and it takes effort to acknowledge these small mercies.

Taking a closer look at the village, Steve realizes that the crops explain the relative prosperity reflected in the brick schoolhouse, and the grist mill, and the intricately carved spire atop the Church — which reaches far, far above the surrounding tree line. There are children laughing and playing in the green space between homes.

It doesn’t look like a village ravaged by illness, or war, or poverty. It might be safe to stop here after all.

✢ ✢ ✢

Steve steps into the clearing, feeling like he’s offering himself to this place as a sacrifice. If he’s being honest with himself, he’s not sure they won’t kill him on sight. Maybe that would be a mercy, too.

Not far off from where he emerges, a man with broad shoulders and dark hair is rhythmically harvesting wheat with a scythe. From where Steve is standing, up to his chest in scratchy wheat, he can hear the pleasing _skritch-shhh-skritch-shhh_ sound that the blade makes as it shears the grain. 

A hundred yards away, three other men are doing the same work — not nearly as quickly or smoothly. _W hy is he so far from the others,_ Steve wonders. Some conversation would make the day’s work go faster. Even at the docks, when half the men were avoiding him and the other half were actively antagonizing him, they all still deigned to speak to Steve about the minutiae of whatever crossed their mind — the weather, their wives’ complaining, their suspicions that their children weren’t from their own seed — because what the fuck else was there to do while gutting cod from sunup to sundown?

The nearer man is wearing nothing but breeches. Lying to himself, Steve pretends to notice this for the first time. His bare skin is slick with sweat and tanned golden, probably from a summer of manual labour; from the way his longish hair — longer than was proper for a man, really — fell in his face, Steve can’t get a sense of what he looked like, except for the sharp line of his stubbled jaw and the way he bit his lower lip as he worked, grunting under his breath with every heavy swing. For what felt like minutes, Steve was able to take him in undisturbed, his eyes tracing the strength of his finely-muscled forearms, and the wide curve of his shoulders, and the pulsing muscles stretched across his ribs, which rippled as he wound up and then exploded with force, slashing at the stalks of wheat with the massive scythe gripped in his (large, handsome) hands. And then —

Mid-swing, the man stops and stands upright, leaning the scythe against his shoulder. Shielding his eyes from the sun, and regarding Steve with an expression somewhere between suspicion and boredom, he asks: “Who are you?” 

And Steve finally gets a good look at his face — every devastatingly beautiful inch of it, all deep-set gray-green eyes and wide, hard-yet-soft mouth, panting from his exertion under the blazing late-summer sun. 

Those eyes bore straight into Steve’s and steal the fucking air out of his lungs. And in that moment, Steve knows that he is weak, and pathetic, and _predictable._ He’d walked for days in search of a new start and now here he was — allowing himself to be overcome by sin, within mere seconds of the Lord offering this village to him as an opportunity for redemption. Predictable.

Steve feels suddenly aware, too, of his own fucking appearance: the strap of the bag slung over his shoulder is beginning to cut into his skin, even through his linen shirt and the rough wool of his coat — he’d kept it on, even in the sweltering late-July heat and taking his odds with sunstroke, because he couldn’t fit it on top of all the goods he owned in the world which were already stuffed in the bag, and because the jacket itself is so shabby that it seemed a fair warning not to bother for anyone who might try to rob him on the road. 

The black eye he’s sporting, creeping up around the side of his right eye and already turning yellow-green, is enough of a warning, too — whether that warning is, _Don’t mess with me, I’m dangerous_ _,_ or, _Don’t mess with me, I’ve already had the shit beaten out of me this week_ _,_ he’s not quite sure. 

“Looking for lodging,” he says, after too long of a pause. It’s not much of an answer, but clearly it’s enough — the man nodds and points toward a large house, set like a nail in the middle of the town. It’s fine-looking, washed white and glowing bright under the late afternoon light. “Thank you,” says Steve, awkwardly, and waits a moment for some next beat in the non-conversation.

But the man simply nods again and lifts the scythe from his shoulder, returning to his work and turning his back to Steve as he begins to pick his his way through the wheat field and toward the village.

✢ ✢ ✢

The home is two stories high, surrounded by a low wooden fence. The dirt pathway, leading to the imposing front doors, is flanked by two vegetable gardens, full of tomatoes and climbing tendrils of beans, thriving in the damp midsummer heat. 

Standing at the edge of the fence, Steve catches a glimpse of the heavy velvet curtains hanging in the windows — the windows themselves are large and multi-paned, set with beautifully smooth glass. He wouldn’t be surprised if the glass came from the factories in France.

A little boy, no more than eight, is playing out in front — using a stick as a sword, he slashes at the apple tree that casts a pleasant, mottled shade across the yard. Steve calls out to him: “Excuse me! Who lives here?”

The kid wrinkles his nose, annoyed at the interruption and being forced to pause his game to speak with a dullard. He rolls his eyes: “The Reverend John Lawson, of course.”

“Of course,” repeats Steve, shoving his hands into his pockets and leaning back to take in the grandioseness of the home. _It makes sense, really_ _._ Despite the teachings of Matthew, it’s rare around these parts to see a man of the cloth reject the comfort of fineries. “Is he home?”

“Why don’t you find out?” says the kid, going back to his game. He growls at the tree — _Take that, you cur!_ — and kicks it hard with the heel of his boot, before continuing to slash at it like he’s forging a path through the jungles of India. Steve’s torn between annoyance and amusement at the sheer gall of the fuckin’ kid, with a mouth like that on him at his age — no less the fact that he’s using it to mouth off at a six-foot-two stranger with a hunting knife on his hip and his black eye. 

“S’pose I will, then,” says Steve, mostly to himself. He laughs and steps over the fence. As he makes his way up the pathway to knock on the massive oak doors with the heavy brass doorknocker, shined up as pretty as a mirror, he feels briefly embarrassed at the state of his boots, so scuffed they’ve almost turned to suede and caked with miles’ worth of horse shit and mud. 

✢ ✢ ✢

The Reverend John Lawson is, indeed, home. 

He sits at the head of his massive, oil-shined dining room table, dragging his fingers through the grey-brown hair of his beard. The golden buttons of his waistcoat glint in the lamplight, almost as brightly as the rings on his fingers, and nearly burst with the well-fed belly they keep reined in underneath. 

“You’re unmarried?” he asks, leaning forward to pour a generous serving of cream into his finely-painted china cup. 

The rim of the cup is gold, too, just like the edges of the saucer that holds it — as are the hands of the grandfather clock that ticks pleasantly against the wall, and the necklace tucked against the Reverend’s chest underneath his otherwise-simple linen shirt. The more Steve allows his attention to wander around the room, like a distracted little fly, bouncing off everything shiny, the more he begins to convince himself he’s wandered into the home of King Midas himself.

Suddenly aware of his own rudeness, Steve reaches forward to pick up his own ignored cup of coffee and take a cautious sip, before answering: “Yes, sir.”

It’s only the second time he’s had coffee — in his entire life — and he hasn’t developed any sort of taste for it. It’s like burnt leather in his mouth, all rancid oil and char. Steve takes two more large sips, opting to take it like the cod liver oil his mother had fed him when he was young and often ill — _Get on with it then_ , she scolded him, _dilly-dallying will just make it worse._

“And you’ve come from the Middle Colonies.” It’s an announcement, not a question, and the Reverend winks at him as though he’s sussed out some sort of secret that was now shared between them. “New York?”

Steve nods. “Yes, sir. You can tell?”

“I have an ear for these things. And I can tell when a man has spent plenty of time out on the docks.” The Reverend gestures at Steve’s rough hands and broad shoulders — compulsively, Steve wraps his arms around himself and tucks his hands out of sight, under his biceps, like he feels compelled to make himself smaller under the Reverend’s gently scrutiny. “My second cousin, Nathaniel Lawson, is New York Harbour’s most well-regarded and successful fish merchant. I imagine you’ve heard of him?” He pauses to take a long draw on his pipe — its bulb inlaid, too, with an ornate golden pattern of flowers — then slowly exhales, the thick cherry tobacco smoke filling the space between them and swirling in front of his eyes. He doesn’t blink as he adds, “Or perhaps he’s heard of you.”

Steve holds his breath. Not from the smoke, but the unspoken threat underlying those words. “No, sir. I’m — I was just a labourer. Spent most of my days gutting and drying cod.”

“Well,” says the Reverend quickly, “it is my greatest sorrow to inform you that we have no fishery operation in Acomb at present” — he makes a show of holding his hands out regretfully —“but as you can see, our crops and our herds are hardy, and the forest provides everything else we need, beyond what can be traded for in the markets in Boston. Now, I don’t expect you have the wrong impression of Acomb, that we are” — he waves a hand in the general direction of the fields, and the pastures — “subsistence farmers. We’re commercially-minded, here, Mister — _what was your name again_ _?_ ”

Actually, he hadn’t had the opportunity to state his name, before the Reverend had whisked him off to the dining room, but Steve figured nothing would be helped by pointing that out. “It was Steven Rogers, sir.”

“Mister Steven Rogers, we make a pretty penny selling grain in the city. Acomb flour is renowned for miles in every direction.” 

“I have no doubt, sir.”

“As are our young women.” He pauses to read Steve’s face, and Steve puts enormous effort into appearing neither eager nor uninterested. “In any event,” says the Reverend, waving his hand in front of his face as if to belatedly clear the smoke that no longer hung in the air. “What we _do_ need is another trapper.” He claps his hands together sharply for emphasis, making Steve jump. “Have you any experience?”

“Yes, sir. My Pa taught me how to trap rabbits — foxes and beavers, too.”

“Excellent, excellent,” says the Reverend, rising to his feet. “It’s settled then.”

“Oh,” says Steve, awkwardly rising, too. Sensing that he’s being dismissed, he lets the Reverend steer him back to the front door with a friendly hand on his shoulder — all the while being careful not to step too heavily, so as not to knock any more mud from his boots onto the home’s perfectly-varnished floors. “Thank you,” he adds, unsure what exactly he’s saying thank you for.

“We could use more good men,” says the Reverend. He adds with a wink: “You met my nephew, Aaron, outside — he’s the nearest thing we have to an eligible bachelor at the moment.” He holds out his right hand and as Steve reaches out to shake it, he snatches up the back of Steve’s elbow with his left hand, pulling him close so that he can murmur, low and quiet as a bobcat’s growl: “I trust you haven’t come to our town to bring trouble.” 

His face is near enough that Steve can smell the sour tobacco on his breath — then he catches the Reverend’s gaze flick pointedly toward the bruise under his eye. And, just as quickly, the Reverend lets go. Steve pointedly ignores the ache in his joints, although he’s certain that the ghost of the Reverend’s fingers is imprinted white against his skin, the blood pushed out by his grip. 

Then, like nothing happened, the Reverend’s face rearranges itself into something resembling a normal, pleasant expression, and he smiles at Steve — not in a way that meets his eyes, mind you: “We’ll get you set up with Mary and Bartholomew Allerton. They have room for a lodger, and could use the assistance in the meantime. Though I’m sure that you’ll be married off soon enough — you’ll be fought over like a fatted pig at auction, pretty as you are.”

✢ ✢ ✢

Mary and Bartholomew Allerton are beautiful, small-town folk — _Bart_ _,_ he’d insisted, shaking Steve’s hand and grinning at him beneath a massive beard like he was a long-lost nephew. His other hand, arthritic and gnarled, gripped a wooden cane. Catching Steve’s glance, he added, “I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not old and senile just yet.” He’d laughed, and Mary, tiny and rugged, elbowed him in the ribs: “How do you know you’re not senile?” And then she had laughed, too, a warm sound, and guided Steve by his elbow to his room, and told him, “You take as much time as you need to get settled in, we’re so glad to have you.” 

All the while, Steve felt out of sorts from their unearned kindness. It felt so foreign, like a language he had never encountered.

The room at Allertons’ home is small, hardly eight feet by ten feet — barely long enough for Steve to lie on the floor and spanned the length of it, his stretched his toes out and his arms above his head. Not that he planned to do that. 

The room is more than Steve could have ever hoped for after days of sleeping rough and washing himself in creeks.

A small writing table stands in one corner, with a beautiful walnut chair tucked underneath, and a wardrobe in another. Steve’s never had a wardrobe before, and he briefly considers the luxurious thought of _owning things to put in it_ _._ He’d arrived with little — a few shirts, a few trousers. None dear enough that he wouldn’t have been just as happy to leave them behind in New York. 

The only things worth saving were his Ma’s locket, which held a small curl of her hair, and his Pa’s ring. Neither were in his rucksack, but were instead tucked in his right sock so as to be safe even if he were robbed blind. Now, he pulls them out and slides them to the very back of the wardrobe, tucked underneath his folded shirts. They’re both dead now and, it’s a horrid, selfish thought, but: he’s glad they’re not alive to be shamed by him.

On the windowsill, a small vase with freshly-picked wildflowers blows gently in the wind, which itself carried the wet, earthy smell of Acomb’s main road into his room. A tiny gesture of welcome. 

For a long time, Steve sits at the edge of the bed with his socked feet planted on the ground and wonders if this was real, or whether he was murdered on the way here and his soul is still dealing with the aftermath, and God’d put him in a lovely little reverie of Limbo in the meantime until the Devil decided he was worth claiming. 

He stares at his feet and wiggles his toes, then wiggles his fingers where they lay gripping his knees, and then he closes his eyes and focuses on the smell of the room around him. 

The floor is freshly swept, the wood furniture rubbed with beeswax, and the bedding laundered with soda — and then the wildflowers, and the road. 

It feels real enough. Time will tell.

✢ ✢ ✢

It’s relatively easy to get your bearings in Acomb, Steve realizes, as he walks to the General Store on strict orders from Bartholomew to pick up a loaf of bread and some beeswax candles with the paper money he’d pressed into Steve’s hand — _We’re having a proper welcome dinner tonight._

The main dirt road is the centre of everything. Most of the village’s homes were clustered along it, with the stable near the far western end. It was the main artery of the place, with a variety of small-town-looking folks bustling up and down it, except where branched off near the middle, veering south toward the Church and toward the enormous white oak tree that stood beside it. 

The oak’s branches were gnarled and crooked, reaching out for twenty feet in each direction. It stood as though it was keeping judgmental watch over the village that had formed around it. It had been there hundreds of years longer than Acomb, and would be there, still, hundreds of years after Acomb was little more than some bricks and nails left behind in the dirt.

Steve walks past a fine, two-level home with a magnificent brick chimney rising from its roof, just as a woman — soaked up to her sleeves and still carrying a wet rag in her hand — chases her young son out of the street in front of it, cawing after him, “You get inside and wash your face Isaiah, or your father will feed you to the witch tonight!” 

The boy screams, half in terror and half in pleasure at the joy and attention of being scolded. She briefly pauses her chasing to make eye contact with Steve and smile at him, her head nodding slightly in acknowledgment. 

“Good day, Mr. Rogers,” she says, and Steve wonders how she could possibly know his name already — he’d barely been in the village for hours, let alone days — before she trails after the child again, who’s still laughing manically as his little legs carry him back into their home. It’d been a long time since he had lived in a place so small — without new faces constantly unloading from then ships bumping up against the docks, arriving and then leaving again, just as often as the tide came in and ebbed back out. 

He’d forgotten just how small some places could be.

✢ ✢ ✢

Immediately upon stepping into the General Store, Steve finds himself face to face with The Man from the Field. 

He glances in Steve’s direction — flatly, really, like there’s nobody or nothing at all of interest where Steve is standing, then makes a beeline for the shopkeeper’s counter. He was wearing a shirt, now, and a jacket to fend off the early evening chill, and his hair has been tamed with a brush, no longer matted with sweat from the day’s work.

Steve wrestles with whether to say hello. _What good would that bring_ _?_ To say hello to this man whom he found so beautiful that he’d nearly immediately forgotten why he’d found himself here, in Acomb, far away from New York? He nearly jumps as the Man growls: “Nails.”

“S’pose you have the Reverend’s approval for that?” The elderly shopkeeper clears his throat — he sounds curiously nervous, and Steve’s attention is piqued. He busies himself with examining trinkets set on a display table and tries to look as though he’s not watching this strange little interaction occur. The Man from the Field doesn’t respond to the question asked of him, and the awkward silence must be sufficient confirmation because old man nods and reaches below the counter, loudly shuffling things aside on the rough-hewn shelves. “That’ll be one bag, then?” A single nod. “Right. Here you are, then.” 

Instead of handing it to him, the old man drops the bag onto the counter. It lands with a heavy thud and, without thanks or acknowledgment, the Man from the Field wordlessly picks it up and turns to leave.

Through the wobbly glass of the shop’s front window, Steve watches as a large brown dog — a hound, more like, massive and thick-coated, with black fur painted around its nose and eyes — trots into view, sidling up to the Man’s and nosing at his hand. Sniffing for snacks, no doubt. The Man’s expression remains hard, even as he rubs affectionately at the dog’s ears, and, just as he’d kept his eyes trained on his feet as he left the shop, he seems to pointedly ignore Steve’s gaze, keeping his own eyes trained straight ahead as he walks away. 

The shopkeeper clears his throat. “That’s”— a name nearly left his mouth. He stops short and reconsiders his words, fidgeting with the edge of his apron. “Well, that’s Winnifred’s son. Best you leave that boy alone.”

And, even though he doesn’t understand, Steve smiles and nods, and he purchases his candles and his bread and thanks the man for his hospitality all the same. 

As he steps back out into the road, Steve spots the Man from the Field still walking in the distance — far across the green, and apparently making his way out toward a small, weather-worn home standing alone near the edge of the woods, the hound still trotting enthusiastically alongside him. 

✢ ✢ ✢

After only a couple of weeks in the village, Steve’s begun to notice the Reverend’s sermons always set the tone for the village for the next few days. It makes sense — the preaching, delivered with a thespian’s flair from the Church’s raised pulpit and always focused on some collective evil that the village might turn its collective ire toward, is the most entertainment many in Acomb get all week.

_The Lord teaches us that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your strength and all your mind — and your neighbour as yourself. Each of us must remember, with every opportunity to help those who are more unfortunate than ourselves, that whoever sows sparingly reaps sparingly._

_Whoever sows generously — they also reap generously. Each of you must look inside yourselves, deep inside your hearts, and consider what you have decided to give. Do you give it reluctantly, or under compulsion? Thou must be a cheerful giver. As freely as you have received, you must also give._

Steve tries to follow the sermons’ teachings too — he’s getting quite good with everyone’s names, and their children’s names, and their parents’ and uncles and aunts’ and cows’ and dogs’ names. Everyone’s already quickly gotten to know him, too, always prying for his history: _How did a fine young man like you end up in this little corner of the world?_ He plays coy, and they don’t seem to mind. They invite him to dinners at their homes, and to the raising of the new barn, and they treat him like one of their own.

✢ ✢ ✢

Trapping with Pa in the forests outside of Schenectady wasn’t much different than here, in the forests outside of Acomb. The process is the same, anyhow, just as he’d learned as a kid, except the tools here are better — rather than the sinew or brass wire snares he was taught to tie as a child, Acomb has good, heavy iron traps with impressive springs, for catching bigger game than mere jackrabbits for the evening’s stew.

“The Reverend doesn’t want us to be a subsistence town,” says Henry, and Steve wonders if this is supposed to be the town’s own apothegm — perhaps the Reverend doth protest too much. He says it as he walks Steve along his own trapline, proudly pointing out each, hidden in the underbrush. “I got twenty-five grey foxes last season,” he says, puffing out his chest a little and covertly glancing at Steve’s face. Steve isn’t sure why he wants to impress him at all, but he nods approvingly all the same. “In the summer, we mostly use the smaller traps for rabbits; the rabbits are a treat in the summer but not much fur worth a damn to be had, not until the leaves turn, or until the snow falls — ‘course, you know that.”

“Of course,” says Steve.

Henry has the type of disposition that makes him seem like he’s somehow both thirty years old and freshly turned ten, all at the same time. It’s reflected in his appearance, too — though his beard has tiny flecks of gray among the red, his face has a plump childishness about it, like he hasn’t quite hit puberty and lost his baby fat. 

They’re in the process of walking the entire six miles of Henry’s trapline, twenty-nine sets of traps spread across it, and Steve is certain that Henry has hardly stopped talking for the entire journey — about his favourite foods (jerked venison, and cranberry jam), and the young woman named Bethany who caught his eye in town (she has the most beautiful nose this side of the Great Pond, he insists), and the times he’d been allowed to accompany Marcus on his trips to market, alongside his very own pile of pelts to be sold to the townspeople of Amesbury, and Westfield, and Andover.

“There’s a plaque on the tree in Andover where they hung the witches,” explains Henry, shaking his head. He seems disgusted, though at which part Steve can’t quite tell — the hanging part, or the witches. Then, he adds, “Those poor young girls deserved mercy — not _that_.”

At this, Steve’s ears finally perk up after the near coma they’d been lulled into over the last hour. He glances sideways at Henry, trying not to appear _too_ interested, lest he accidentally encourage Henry to expand at unreasonable and unnecessary length. “Heard about that.”

“Are you a religious man, Steven?” asks Henry, carefully. It’s a loaded question anywhere in the world, but especially here in Acomb, Steve figures. He weighs his answer, and then curses himself for not saying _yes_ quickly enough, but, thankfully, Henry doesn’t seem to notice or care that Steve hasn’t volunteered a response, and continues talking anyway. “I’ll trust you not to repeat this, but —” Henry blows out a breath. “There’s a bit of common lunacy over in Andover, I think. The witches in the Bible, well . . . Everything’s a lesson, isn’t it? I’ve spent a lot of time in these woods, and I’ve never seen a unicorn, or a dragon. Seems to me that maybe it doesn’t matter if Jesus’ blood really is the wine, or if the wine is just wine, or if he turned water into wine — it’s about the lesson, isn’t it? The Bible isn’t telling us to watch out for naked ladies dancing about in the forest, or flying about with the owls.” He waves a hand over his head. “The whole point of God’s teachings is to tell us to keep our heads down, and be good and to be honest, and dedicated to Him — but not deceitful, and not meddling in the lives of others, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” says Steve, after some consideration. “Yes, I think so.”

“Anyway.” Henry picked a leaf off a nearby branch and fiddled with it self-consciously. “Lots of time to think out in these woods. Never mind my muck-spouting. Mary and Bart are good folk, don’t you think?” he added.

“They’re wonderful.”

“You’re from New York?” 

“Yes.”

“Why’d you leave?” 

“Needed a change.”

“I hear it’s awful busy there.”

“It is.”

“You were born there?”

“Eh, a ways outside. Schenectady.”

“Are your parents still there?”

Steve pauses. “Dead.”

“Oh — I’m sorry.” Henry wrinkles his forehead — he seems genuinely contrite for having stepped in it with his question, not that he could have possibly known. “My father died six winters ago. I don’t know what I would do if I lost my mother, too.” 

The thought is enough for Henry to quiet, for a while.

At the end of the trapline, an hour and a half past Acomb’s northernmost treeline, is a river — and a cabin. “That’s the cabin, obviously,” says Henry, gesturing vaguely at it. It’s tiny, not much more than four log-built walls, a slanted shingled roof, and a door in the side facing the forest. Then he points east: “I expect your line will run alongside mine, maybe a half mile off. You can use this if it gets too cold, or if you see a storm coming. There are furs and enough stores to keep you fed for the night, if need be.” He plants his hands on his hips and rocks on his heels, adding, “Good for a bit of quiet, too.”

“Good to know,” says Steve. 

✢ ✢ ✢

The walk back to Acomb is much of the same — Henry chats Steve’s ear off, while Steve considers the fact that it makes perfect sense that Henry has been assigned a job that requires him to, mostly, work alone. 

As they finally emerge back into the clearing, at the edge of Acomb’s limits, the Man From the Field’s house catches Steve’s eye again, a hundred yards off and standing well apart from the rest of the town, built right at the edge of the trees. 

Steve gestures towards it. “What’s the story there?” 

“That’s James’ place,” says Henry. _James_. Steve resists shaping the name with his mouth. “He’s alright. Everyone’s a bit” — he waggles his fingers indecisively — “ _weird_ about him, but he keeps to himself. No need to pay him any mind.” 

“What's his deal? Thief?”

“No, nothing like that.” Henry chuckles, and then his face shifts – his expression grows dark, and then embarrassed, almost, as though he regrets being the one to explain Acomb’s particular antagonism toward The Man From the Field. _James_. “I’m sure you’ve noticed, but folk in Acomb have a bit — a bit of a superstitious streak to them. Most reckon he’s a witch.”

“A witch?” Steve nearly bursts out laughing. 

He isn’t sure what he had expected — but it wasn’t that. It’s 17-fucking-22, and even Steve — from way up in New York — knows that the fabricated religious furor over witches is long over. He figured maybe James had touched the wrong village daughter after too much ale, or had stolen from the Reverend or his flock. Or maybe that he had committed the same sins as Steve — that he had gone after strange flesh, and the village was being lenient with him by merely shunning him rather than stringing him up by the oak tree.

Henry looks at him sympathetically, like he’s simple-minded and needs a bit of guidance to pick up what Henry is putting down: “You know, _a witch_ — consortium with the Devil, black cats and dancing naked in the woods—”

“I know what a witch is.” Steve pauses. “So that’s what most think. What about you?”

“Ah,” Henry rubs a hand down the side of his face and scratches his beard. Then he explains, speaking slow, like he’s choosing his words carefully: “He’s good to my mum’s cattle, and I don’t carry an ounce of hatred in my heart for him. The Reverend, and just about everyone else in this town by the Reverend’s lead, treats him like a leper — not like Jesus treated the lepers, mind you, but like he’s got a curse from God. I just try to keep my head down and not draw too much attention, myself. They’re fickle folk ‘round here; I suspect they’ll just as easily turn on you and me as they would him.” He adds, “I think it’s best not to ask too many questions and leave well enough alone.”

“So you don’t think he’s a witch,” says Steve.

“Well. I didn’t say that, either,” says Henry.

✢ ✢ ✢

Every Sunday, Steve tries to covertly scan the faces that beam reverently up at the Reverend from the Church’s fine, well-shined pews — only, the one face he searches for never seems to be present.

✢ ✢ ✢

Steve meets Anna at the General Store, only a few weeks after his arrival. 

The first words she says to him are, “Aren’t you a hell of a consolation prize, then?” and the first words he says back are, “I’m certain you can do better,” — and he was pleased to earn a warm laugh, with her head thrown back, and the blush that bloomed across her cheeks.

Anna has light brown hair, and slim wrists, and a sharp chin that Steve finds beautiful. He likes her tendency to tilt her head back and jut her sharp little chin out when someone speaks to her sharply, an indignant gesture that betrays how little she cares for her station in life and her assumed destiny of obedience — just likes her coarse mouth and her churlishness.

A week after they meet, Sarah points at two children playing in the grass and says to him, “Are you going to give me two of my own, Steven Rogers?” And he proposes to her right then, under the setting sun. She tells him that she’s the luckiest girl this side of Main Street, and says yes. 

Her parents are unsure about Steve — a stranger from New York, no background to speak of. _Why shouldn’t they be?_ But then, by the same token — who were they to be picky? They had no sons, and Steve could provide for the entire family. 

They’re married in the Fall, under the shade of the apple tree, and surrounded by most of the town’s residents dressed in their Sunday best. After officiating their union, the Reverend shakes Steve’s hand, beaming with pride: “You’re settling in well, Steven Rogers, Stranger from the North.”

As a wedding gift, the Reverend, and Anna’s parents, and the Allertons — Steve had tried to talk them out of it, but they had insisted — pay to have a house erected for them: a small rectangular, sturdy little thing at the end of the road with a clear view of the Church — _So God always watches over your family_ _,_ explains Mary, clasping Steve’s hands tightly in her own. He thanks her, and thanks her some more, and kisses her hands and both her cheeks.

✢ ✢ ✢

On their first night in their new home — the first time they’ve ever truly been alone together — Anna unties the tassled cords knotted at her throat and slides her white nightdress from her shoulders. She lets it drop to the floor in a pile around her feet, nervously, before stepping out of it and bending down to fold it and place it on the wooden rocking chair in the corner. 

Then she turns to look Steve in the eye — her chin raised high, daring him to say something.

“You’re beautiful,” he says. And she is. Her milky skin glows in the low lamplight, and her chest is flushed pink as a prairie rose with embarrassment, or excitement. Steve’s eyes slowly track the soft curve of her breasts and the swell of her hips and then, realizing he’s still clothed and that he’s put her at a particularly unfair disadvantage, he pulls his night-shirt over his head. And then he’s naked, too, all at once. 

On his exposed skin, the air feels hot and cold at the same time. He shivers. 

Then she moves toward him, footsteps so soft as to be inaudible beneath the sound of Steve’s blood pulsing in his ears, and presses her body against his, and kisses him like she’s never tasted a man’s mouth before — and she probably hasn’t, although Steve doesn’t want to assume and it doesn’t matter to him either way. 

Her kiss is hungry, and curious, and only a little bit afraid.

He slides his fingers between her legs, finding her silky-wet, and she ruts against his hand, letting out a soft moan which he swallows with his own mouth. He presses one finger into her, then two, and she leans pleasingly into his touch, angling her pelvis so that he can sink them deeper into her. Exploring her, he gently twists his hand and strokes against her inner wal with his middle finger, toward the soft swell of her belly, and she makes another small sound, and her body clenches around his fingers, and — 

Steve nearly cries out with relief as his cock finally, _finally_ quickens.

✢ ✢ ✢

It’s still dark out when someone starts to pound on the door. 

Steve jolts up in bed.

“Who is that?” murmurs Anna, rolling over next to him and rubbing at her eyes. The banging keeps on, and Steve feels around on the floor next to the bed for his night-shirt, before yanking it on and hurrying to the door. 

“Oh, _thank God_.” Henry is on the other side, his fist still raised mid-knock. There’s blood smeared across his chest, and straw stuck in his beard. His eyes are roving and panicked as he explains: “Buttercup is breech.”

“Who?” 

“ _My heifer_ ,” says Henry, impatiently, “Do you know how to deliver a calf?”

“No,” says Steve, with what he’s certain is a stupid look on his face, but he gets dressed and follows Henry out to the field anyway, uselessly but hoping to at least offer encouragement, or moral support as he stands by while someone else hopefully solves the problem. He tightly clutches a dim lantern in his hand — the sun won’t come up for still a while yet, and the early morning air is icy and wet on Steve’s sleepy skin. He rubs hard at his eyes to try to wake himself up, and to try to convinces his vision to adjust to the moonlit field.

They walk quickly toward the common pasture, and Henry explains: “Samuel usually helps, but he’s picking up a sow in Andover and won’t be back ‘til tomorrow — can’t wait til tomorrow, she’ll die.” 

Bart and Marcus are already by Buttercup’s side by the time Steve and Henry arrive. She’s a massive brown heifer, laying on her side in the grass — her breaths go quickly, and she huffs and kicks her legs uncomfortably between grunts and wails. “I have some experience with birthing calves, but,” Bart raises his arthritic hands regretfully. “I could try to instruct—”

He’s cut off by another groan. Buttercup is getting louder, making bleating, miserable sounds. For want of anything better to do, Steve crouches by her head and begins to stroke the space between her eyes, where there’s a little patch of white fur. He runs his hands across her flank, and her neck, over and over, murmuring softly to her as the rest of the men figure things out —

“Fuck,” says Henry under his breath, and Steve turns his head to look. 

Someone approaches in the dark, without a lamp. It takes a while — until he’s barely fifteen feet away and the combined efforts of their lamps illuminates the contours of his face against the pitch black of the sky — before Steve realizes that it’s James.

“Can I?” he says flatly, gesturing toward the cow. The men all jump backward to give way — except for Steve, who doesn’t realize that it’s the socially correct thing to do in the circumstances, and Bart, whose painful, swollen knees don’t allow for any sort of performative disdain.

Henry nods his assent at James, his hat clutched in his hand and pressed against his chest: “Please.”

James pushes his hair out of his face and behind his ears, sharply. He looks more awake than any of them, and calmer, too. Confident, even. He takes a moment to drag his hands down the cow’s belly, his hands nearly brushing against Steve’s, and murmurs unintelligibly to her. 

To Steve’s left, the other men, including Henry, have banded together, standing around in a circle with their backs turned to what’s happening. They look like a group of spooked cows, themselves, turning inward for comfort against predators. Steve drags his eyes away from James only long enough to notice that they’re actually _praying_ ; he assumes for the cow, at first, but then he hears some of the words on Bart’s lips, none of which make sense in the moment: _Jesus, forgive us our sins, forgive Elizabeth’s boy, we ask that you—_

The cow rears her head and tries to struggle to her feet and James hisses at him, “ _HOLD HER!_ ” and Steve immediately does as he’s told, gently pulling her head back down to the cool, damp ground.

Without any sign of hesitation, James rolls up his sleeves, up past his elbows and toward his biceps, and slides one arm into the cow’s body. He closes his eyes as he does it, his dark eyebrows knotted together in concentration and his mouth pressed into a determined frown, and Steve can see the way the muscles in his arm tense and flex as he moves his hand around, manipulating the calf inside of her. 

“How long has she be in labour?” James asks. The men are so entranced in their prayers that nobody answers, and when James’ eyes meet his own Steve can only shake his head helplessly at him. _“_ _Hey!_ _”_ James barks, and the men startle, their prayers faltering. “How long has she been in labour?” 

“Eight hours,” says Henry. His voice falters and breaks like a teenager’s. Steve has no idea whether eight hours is not great, or very bad — but it feels somewhat explanatory that James mutters under his breath: _Fuck_. 

James digs his knees into the ground, bracing himself to press hard with the hand that’s inside Buttercup. He grunts with exertion as he works to move the calf into place, twisting and shifting his own body to get the right grip; his hair falls in his eyes again — he ignores it, just closes them against the irritation and keeps working. He groans again, this time in frustration, and inserts his other arm. 

He continues to work in silence, except for the heavy breaths of the cow and the men’s murmured prayers — and Steve’s own heartbeat pounding in his ears. Even Buttercup has stopped bellowing, now, and Steve doesn’t know whether to be worried or calmed by it. Then —

“Do you have the rope?” hisses James, and Henry nods — it’s draped across his shoulder, a length of cotton cord with a small slipknot already tied at the end, and he nearly drops it before handing it to James, who’s now pulled his arms back out of Buttercup. They’re soaked in a thick, sticky slurry of cow shit and mucus and blood, up to both shoulders. James snatches the rope from Henry with one filthy hand and reaches back into her with both arms. After a moment, he pulls them back out, leaving the rope inside of her: “Okay — now we pull.”

Steve looks helplessly to James for instruction. He seems to consider Steve for a moment, his eyebrow raised as he takes him in — Steve’s nervous face, then Steve’s shaking hands, still stroking and patting the heifer’s head: “You — you can stay where you are.” 

The men line up to each grab hold on the rope, even Bart, who takes up the rear with his cane balanced under his armpit, and James kneels back down by the heifer’s tail, one hand splayed on her belly.

“Pull,” he instructs firmly.

And they do.

It takes a long fucking time, and the sun is just starting to come up over the trees — between contractions, the men stand and pant and don’t say a word to each other, or to James. They avoid even looking in James’ direction, just keeping their gaze trained on their own shuffling feet, waiting for his verbal instruction. The birth seems to take hours, although it’s really only minutes — and finally the back hooves appear, wrapped ‘round with the knotted rope, and then after a few more pushes, the tail, and the belly, and then the head. 

The men nearly fall backward onto each other as the calf finally falls into the grass with a soft, wet thud — a few seconds later, the placenta follows. 

Even in the low light, with the first blades of sunlight cutting over the tops of the trees and the men’s shadows cast long across the field, Steve can see that the wet little calf, laying splayed on the ground wasn’t moving. Its eyes are open, but they’re flat and unblinking even against the sunrise.

Everything is still for a moment, silent except for the sound of the heifer’s relieved, puffed breaths. 

Suddenly, James jolts forward to lean over the pathetic little thing; he brings his face down to the calf’s, and presses his cheek against its neck, and begins to to whisper in its ear. 

Steve’s brain can’t make sense of it — he can _hear_ the words (or at least he thinks they’re words), and _can’t_ hear them at the same time, but then he can also _feel_ them, wiggling around in his stomach and in a ticklish little spot at the base of his skull. Unthinkingly, he reaches up and swipes at his neck, as if to swipe away a spider crawling across his skin, but there’s nothing there. The men’s bodies wrench violently as they move to turn away and begin to pray again, louder this time, with their hands clasped over their ears and their eyes were closed, and —

The calf begins to struggle and kick. Buttercup struggles against his grip and, half from shock, Steve lets go of his gentle hold on her head so that she can sit up to nose at it, licking at the amniotic fluid coating its fur. 

Fallen backward into the grass, James lies prone on the ground, with his eyes screwed shut — Steve watches his panting mouth, the way his Adam’s apple bobs with every painful-sounding breath and the way the warm moisture of every exhalation blooms upward into the cold morning air. He takes one shuddering breath, and then another, and then finally James rolls over, pushing himself up onto one slippery, shaky arm. 

Steve notices for the first time that James’ nose is bleeding profusely, a river of shocking red blood running from his left nostril and flowing into the corner of his mouth and down the line of his chin. He can’t imagine why.

_Had the calf’s sudden kicking and bucking caught him off-guard?_

James coughs and spits, and in the rising morning light Steve can see that his spittle is bloody, too. "Are you okay—"

With great effort, and a muffled groan, James pushes himself to standing and takes one last, long look at Buttercup and her calf. “Keep an eye on her, and get them both inside the barn.” Compared to before, when he was barking orders at the men, his voice is suddenly raspy and harsh-sounding, like he’s been a week at sea without water. 

Henry nods, still looking nervously at his feet and avoiding James' eyes.

And then James turns to walk away: not a word of thanks is offered by the men, none of which even deign to watch him as he goes. Except for Steve.

He catches the new limp in James’ gait, his left knee seeming to buckle with every other step, and the way his massive dog trots up to join him from where it had lain in the grass all this time, unnoticed by all of them, like a lion crouched on the plains and quietly observing the commotion.


End file.
